


Serpents

by FreshBrains



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Relationship, Blood, F/M, Hunters & Hunting, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, POV Alana Bloom, POV Multiple, POV Will Graham, Past Relationship(s), Scheming, Season/Series 02, Secrets, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:52:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re going to get him to trust us,” Alana says, looking out the window into the dark Wolf Trap night. “We’re going to do it together.”</p><p>Will feels a rush of warmth through his body and knows, deep and punishing, that he loves this woman. “And then what?”</p><p>Alana sighs. Her fingers go still in Applesauce’s fur. “I have no idea.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serpents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! Just some little details about the fic can be founds in the end notes. 
> 
> The title comes from the Sharon Van Etten song of the same name that heavily inspired this fic.

There’s a certain feeling Alana gets when Hannibal looks at her, a certain warmth in the pit of her stomach, deep in her cunt.  It makes her want to breathe deep and fuck and growl and lash out, but she always reins in it.  She’s good at reining it in.

By the time she identifies that look, that small half-smile, she knows he’s not a good man. Her mother always used to tell her to be the serpent in the grass and wait for her turn to strike.  Women had to wait, always wait. Will has to wait, too, though.

She doesn’t mind it so much, as long as Hannibal keeps giving her those looks.

Those looks mean she’s safe from death but nothing else. She feeds off them, and she waits.

*

Alana and Will don’t have sex. Neither of them needs it, at least not with each other.  They’re happiest with their dogs and coffee and books, and when they feel like they need to be so close that they can’t lose sight of one another, they wrap up in each other’s arms and kiss, slow and chaste, until they can sleep.

“I’m thinking of getting another dog,” Alana says, scratching Applesauce behind his ears.  Her nails are the perfect length for affective scratches, and the dogs know that.  “There’s a German Shepard mix at the shelter.  He looks tough.”

“Does Hannibal know we’re together?” Will folds a corner in his book.  He hasn’t looked at it in a long time.  He knows the answer to the question and so does Alana—if it hadn’t been spoken, it had been scented on necks and hands and hair.  On both of them.

“Does it matter?”  Alana leans down and presses her face into Applesauce’s neck, breathing in his warmth.

Will shrugs.  “You know I’m with _him_.  In a way.”

Alana nods.  “And the same goes for me. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Not at all?”

“No,” Alana says resolutely, reaching over to twine her fingers through Will’s. “You would know if it did. I promise.”

“This can’t end well,” Will says dryly, and resumes reading the same paragraph for the fifth time. He thinks back to his conversation (or, lack thereof, in more appropriate terms) out on the lake with Jack, fingers bitten by frost and ice water. They talked around the problem. They created a solution for things that went unsaid. He’d hoped it would be different with Alana.

“We’re going to get him to trust us,” Alana says, looking out the window into the dark Wolf Trap night. “We’re going to do it together.”

Will feels a rush of warmth through his body and knows, deep and punishing, that he loves this woman. “And then what?”

Alana sighs. Her fingers go still in Applesauce’s fur. “I have no idea.”

*

When they come together, the three of them, it is a quiet affair.

They sit in Hannibal’s parlor around an elegant tea service. Will claims he cannot stay long enough for a meal, but Alana knows the real reason.

“I often see Alana,” Hannibal muses, pouring Will his second cup, the amber liquid flowing easily from pot to china. “And I often see Will. But it isn’t often I see you both together anymore.”

Alana hazards a glance at Will, eyes flashing before settling on Hannibal. “We’re often together. Just not _here_.”

“I see,” Hannibal says curtly, and sits. They form a perfect triad—Hannibal and Alana a gentle distance from one another on the settee and Will in the armchair across from them. Hannibal extends a hand to Alana, face betraying nothing. “Let us reconcile that, shall we?”

Alana swallows hard, throat clicking, and sets her teacup down on the saucer.

“What exactly are you proposing, Hannibal?” Will’s voice is soft, eyes slanted to look at the ruby-red carpet. _Too soon_ , his voice tells Alana, and she can hear undertones of panic. She’s never felt more transparent beneath the both of them.

“I am proposing,” Hannibal starts, hand still extended, “that we stop pretending like children.”

Alana lifts her hand, fingers itching to reach out and grasp Hannibal’s hand—it’s a natural response, wanting to both touch his warm skin and flinch away from it. But before she closes the gap between them, she looks at Will, and he gives her an almost imperceptible nod. She takes it as acknowledgment, not permission.

 _Wait_ , she tells herself, and slides over on the settee to be closer to Hannibal, inviting Will into their space. _Wait, and this won’t end badly._

*

They talked, Will and Alana, late into the night only days before. They lay in Will’s deep bathtub, Alana curled against him, the water running steadily—they’re always afraid of his shadow, afraid he has ears where they’d least expect them.

“Have you had sex with him?” Alana’s whisper is heard even over the water.

Will thinks back to Hannibal’s bloodstained hands cupping his face—Randall Tier’s blood—and then wandering down to his chest and thighs, leaving splotches on his bare skin. He thinks of the grain of Hannibal’s oak table on his back, Hannibal’s breath hot against his neck, Hannibal groaning his name.

He thinks of the way he let Hannibal come inside him, leaving him sticky and wet—a poor imitation of what they’d really like to do to one another.

“Yes,” he says. “Have you?”

Alana runs her fingers through the sparse, damp hair on Will’s chest and thinks about what a different man Hannibal was in bed, how smooth and sweet he was, how his hands trembled when they touched her like there was a glorious machine beneath his skin with metal that could bite. He was a dog with a leash wrapped around his neck being yanked by an invisible hand. She thinks about coming hard, body clenching around him, and feeling dazed afterwards, like it was all imagined, like it was just a rose-tinted dream.

“Yes,” she says.

They don’t need to know anything else.

*

Will suggest they go hunting together. It doesn’t surprise Alana, but they can both tell it surprises Hannibal. So far they’ve spent their days indoors, in Hannibal’s kitchen or parlor, in Will’s house, in Alana’s big, warm bed.

“I always took you as a fisherman,” Hannibal says, but they have him on a proverbial hook—he’s paying close attention to them both. He’s scenting the air for change.

Will smiles, eyes sliding to Alana. “Alana would like to feel it.”

 _It_. The growling animal crouching in the corner, the one they’re afraid to draw attention to.

The air in the room seems to sweep out in a hush, leaving their slow breathing and the tick of the clock in its wake. Hannibal looks at Alana, and Alana looks back, gaze hard, turning her body into steel. “You would?”

Alana takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “Yes. I would.”

*

“Are you cold?” Will takes a step towards Alana and halts, hands outstretched like he wants to help but doesn’t know how.

Another shudder runs through Alana’s body, cracking down her spine, and she shakes her head. The deer is smaller up close; she expected it would be a strong animal but it’s _not_ , it’s just a weak thing, and she shot it and gutted it in front of Will and Hannibal.

“She’s not cold,” Hannibal says simply, and takes the hunting knife from Alana’s hands.  The blood transfers easily from her skin to his; blood has the nasty habit of always leaving its trace.  “It’s the adrenaline.  She’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be fine,” Alana whispers, eyes wide.  “I know damn well…what adrenaline is.”  Will still has his hands out, Hannibal offers his arm.

Will can’t help but feel a surge of pride in his chest when she comes to him. He never doubted her, not really, but with Hannibal in their space, in their _minds_ , he can never be certain.

*

“Soon,” Alana says that night after Hannibal is asleep. Her mouth is pressed into Will’s shoulder, words a bare smudge in the dark room.

“Soon,” Will agrees in a whisper.

They stay awake in Hannibal’s bed until the sun rises.

**Author's Note:**

> The canon divergence comes into play in that Alana finds out about Hannibal several episodes before the season 2 finale. She's still had a relationship with Hannibal but is playing the long con like Will did. She has the same knowledge of Hannibal that Will and Jack have.
> 
> Alana and Will enter a sexual and romantic relationship with Hannibal but they are in an asexual romantic relationship together. Past Alana/Hannibal and Hannibal/Will is mentioned in explicit detail. I didn't want to tag it because it might be misleading for people searching for those fic pairings.


End file.
